Department of Internal Medicine, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

Arthritis Res 2002, 4:326-331
doi:10.1186/ar590

Published: 30 July 2002

Abstract

Osteoporosis (OP) and osteoarthritis (OA), the two most common age-related chronic
disorders of articular joints and skeleton, represent a major public health problem
in most developed countries. They are influenced by environmental factors and exhibit
a strong genetic component. Large population studies clearly show their inverse relationship;
therefore, an accurate analysis of the genetic bases of one of these two diseases
may provide data of interest for the other disorder. The discovery of risk and protective
genes for OP and OA promises to revolutionize strategies for diagnosing and treating
these disorders. The primary goal of this symposium was to bring together scientists
and clinicians working on OP and OA in order to identify the most promising and collaborative
approaches for the coming decade. This meeting put into focus the importance of an
adequate genetic approach to several areas of research: the search for the genetic
determinants underlying new susceptibilities, the optimization of previously acquired
data; the establishment of correlations between genetic polymorphism and functional
variants, and gene–gene and gene–environment interactions (particularly those between
genes and nutrients). An adequate genetic approach is also essential with regard to
determining more selective criteria for phenotypic definition of familial OP, in order
to obtain more homogeneous and statistically powerful family-based studies. The symposium
concluded with an interesting overview of the future perspectives offered by DNA microarray
technologies for identifying novel candidate genes, for developing proteomics and
bioinformatics analyses and for designing low-cost clinical trials.